Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) will be deprecated soon

The Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) platform is seven years old and the active device count has been below 1% for some time. Consequently, we are deprecating support for ICS in future releases of Google Play services. For devices running ICS, the Google Play Store will no longer update Play Services APK beyond version 14.7.99.

What does this mean for you, as users of Printoid?

Printoid still supports Android 4.0 (API 14) and 4.0.3 (API 15). I know that some users are using very old tablets to run Printoid next to their setup, that’s why I care a lot about this since the beginning of this project.

Unfortunately, as a developer, it becomes very hard to maintain this support. And that’s the same for Google, that’s why they decided to deprecate the use of Android 4.0 (same as they did for Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) and previous versions).

That’s why I’ve decided, unfortunately, to stop the support of Android 4.0 too. Current users will be able to keep the app installed, but they will receive no more updates of the application from Google Play.

A good solution to keep your old devices to run Printoid: try to install a custom ROM. It’s not so hard to do and you can find very well-done tutorials over the Internet to achieve that. My preference goes to LineageOS, (ex-CyanogenMod) which is compatible with a lot of devices, even the oldest, and allows you to run a more recent version of Android on your relics! 😉